Communication Theories: Cultivation Theory

Cultivation Theory is a social theory that was developed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross in the 1960s and 1970s. The gist of Cultivation Theory is that peoples perceptions of reality are cultivated by exposure to television over time.

According to Cultivation Theory, the process of cultivation occurs in two ways: mainstreaming and resonance.

Mainstreaming occurs especially with heavy television viewers. With heavy television viewers, television symbols dominate other sources of information and ideas about the world. Consequently, people's constructed social realities move toward the mainstream. In other words, the culturally dominant reality is more similar to the reality television portrays than the objective, external reality. Because of this, heavy television viewers tend to believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is; they also tend to think that all politicians are corrupt, and teen crime is at record high levels. Additionally, heavy television viewers of co-cultures tend to have fairly similar beliefs about the world. For example, African Americans and European Americans who are heavy television viewers tend to see the world similarly.

Resonance refers to when events on television coincide with the television viewer's actual everyday realities. For example, heavy television viewers who live in urban areas may see television violence resonated in their neighborhoods. In other words, the social reality may match the objective reality, but it may also result in people believing they cannot build a better life.

Cultivation Theory produces effects on two levels: first order effects and second order effects.

First order effects refers to people learning facts from the media. For example, people may learn from the media how many employed males are involved in law enforcement, or what proportion of marriages end in divorce.

Second order effects hypothesizes about more general issues and assumptions. This means people learn values and assumptions from the media. Some examples of values and assumptions include the following questions: Do you think people are basically honest? Do you think police should be allowed greater force to subdue criminals?

There have been many critiques of this theory. Some critics have noticed that television actually has relatively small effects on people, and other critics have argued that if television is so powerful, then everyone should be affected. Also, the theory is now a little dated since it was created during a time when television was a more dominant form of media, and there were more restrictions on what people could watch. Nowadays, people can watch a variety of content via a variety of mediums, such as cable, Internet, Ti-Vo, etc; this can greatly affect determining whether this media actually affects people's perceptions.

References:

Professor Mullin, University of California